Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened the oversight hearing of the Department of Justice (DOJ) pushing a new narrative Democrats have latched on to: the lie that ICE agents zip-tied children during a Chicago raid.

“In the middle of the night, federal agents pulled women and children out of their beds, crashed down the doors to their homes, destroyed their apartments, zip-tied children and others, and detained immigrants and U.S. citizens alike for hours in vans,” Durbin claimed. “When one witness complained about the treatment of the small children, an agent laughed at her and said, ‘F them kids.’”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker gave a dramatic description of this same story during a Monday press conference and has been repeating it every chance he gets.

But Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin posted that “children were never zip-tied.”

“This is a shameful and disgusting lie. POTUS Trump and Secretary Noem will not let children be exploited and trafficked by gangs and criminals like the past administration.”

The woman claiming she heard that implausible ICE quote, “F-ck them kids,” is seen at the end of the video in the social media post below. This woman described kids “zip-tied to each other,” which is different than the handcuff formation usually seen with zip ties, so even her claim about what she allegedly saw is not clear.   

Whenever Democrats and the media push emotionally laden hoaxes involving children, it is worth remembering that young people are considered minors (“kids” or “children”) until 18. Politicians and defense attorneys like to use words like “kids” to conjure a mental picture of frightened toddlers, but 17-year-old gang bangers are “kids” too, so the mention of “children” must be evaluated critically.

When the narrative began, Bill Melugin of Fox News explained the background on this widely circulated photo that purportedly showed an ICE officer zip-tying a child.

It appeared heartbreaking until it was revealed that this was not ICE abusing children; rather the video portrayed a dad posing for a joke photo with his own child.  

You can follow the lies being told about ICE at The Federalist’s ICE Lie Tracker, which is updated often. The persistent left repeatedly seizes on hoaxes like these to take down the Trump administration and its efforts to enforce immigration law — if it can just repeat this lie enough times without it being refuted.

Durbin spoke the zip-tie lie into the record during the oversight hearing during his opening remarks, giving it the air of credibility because of his position. But Durbin did not ask Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was there to answer questions, about it. He was far more concerned with inflaming anti-ICE sentiment with another hoax than with finding out the truth about what actually happened.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.